Category: Value add

  • Heroes of project management đź¦¸â€Ťâ™‚ď¸Źđź’ŞđźĄ‡

    Heroes of project management đź¦¸â€Ťâ™‚ď¸Źđź’ŞđźĄ‡

    This article hopes to establish project managers throughout history as being vital to the success of the greatest human endeavours, project management best practice is project management best practice after all, whether building pyramids in the desert, or rebuilding a war-ravaged continent and preventing mass starvation.

  • V is for Volunteering

    V is for Volunteering

    One of the criticisms of modern professional discourse is that there are too many opinions — including this one. Lists abound: “10 things to do.” “10 things not to do.” “10 things you thought were true but aren’t.” It’s endless advice in search of a verb. The only advice that really matters, though, is simple:…

  • Factfulness Part Two – Rules of Thumb

    Factfulness Part Two – Rules of Thumb

    Our first article explored Rosling’s Dramatic Instincts—the biases that lead CIOs and Project Managers to overreact to crises, vendor hype, and boardroom pressure. This article explores the very humans tendency to take a ‘good enough’ approach to problem solving. “Heuristics” is the official name, but it is also known as the ‘Rules of Thumb’. Are…

  • Factfulness Part One – Our Dramatic Instincts

    Factfulness Part One – Our Dramatic Instincts

    Humans have a tendency to dramatise. Can we as IT professionals — from the CIO to the project manager to the IT technician — overcome these dramatic instincts?

  • From Firehose to Filter: Effective information flow for CIOs, Portfolio Managers, and everyone else.

    From Firehose to Filter: Effective information flow for CIOs, Portfolio Managers, and everyone else.

    This piece borrows from fluid mechanics to give leaders a practical way to keep information laminar: a simple yardstick (IRe) and a few high-leverage moves—batch the message, narrow the audience, set a steady cadence, right-size scope. With three quick examples, we show how to turn a firehose into a controlled flow of information.

  • Want to improve job performance?

    Want to improve job performance?

    “People’s mental wellbeing has been worsening. In the last 10 years, the number of people expressing stress, sadness, anxiety, anger or worry has been on the rise, reaching its highest levels since the Gallup surveys began.” But there is a practical step we can take to reduce the effects of negative stress…. Walk. Or take…

  • Delivering Better Customer Service through Better Project and Program Management

    Delivering Better Customer Service through Better Project and Program Management

    “Customer service” — along with “value-add” or “quality assurance” — is one of those traditional phrases that can remind us of a different era. Whilst the focus on customer service has changed in recent years, it is still needed, and many organisations suffer from a lack of customer service design and understanding.

  • Better vendor management through program management

    Better vendor management through program management

    The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) defines vendor management (also known as supplier relationship management) as the process that “involves reviewing the portfolio of suppliers, categorising supply relationships by their significance, devoting resources in proportion to the relationship’s significance and managing processes between the parties torealise the relationship objectives.” Traditionally procurement is a…

  • What program managers can learn from NASA

    What program managers can learn from NASA

    When people think of NASA, they tend to think of the moon landings and the enormous benefits mankind has received from the side effects of the space But there is another great benefit of NASA that you might not be aware of: better program and project management.

  • How conflict can successfully be used to improve team performance â€¦

    How conflict can successfully be used to improve team performance â€¦

    Forming, storming, norming and performing is a well-known team building process. But can we harness the disruptive power of conflict to produce better outcomes for our business?